“I have just read the report of the political sermon of Dr.—­(giving the name of a noted sensational preacher, who was in the habit, at times, of discussing politics from his pulpit).  I disapprove political-preaching.  What do you think?”

I expressed my cordial concurrence.

“I will put a stop to it.  The preachers must stop preaching politics, or they must all come into one State Church.  I will at once issue a decree to that effect.”

For some unknown reason, that decree never was promulgated.

After the war, he took a deep interest in the reconstruction of the Southern States.  I met him one day on Montgomery street, when he asked me in a tone and with a look of earnest solicitude: 

“Do you hear any complaint or dissatisfaction concerning me from the South?”

I gravely answered in the negative.

“I was for keeping the country undivided, but I have the kindest feeling for the Southern people, and will see that they are protected in all their rights.  Perhaps if I were to go among them in person, it might have a good effect.  What do you think?”

I looked at him keenly as I made some suitable reply, but could see nothing in his expression but simple sincerity.  He seemed to feel that he was indeed the father of his people.  George Washington himself could not have adopted a more paternal tone.

Walking along the street behind the Emperor one day, my curiosity was a little excited by seeing him thrust his hand into the hip-pocket of his blue trousers with sudden energy.  The hip-pocket, by the way, is a modern American stupidity, associated in the popular mind with rowdyism, pistol shooting, and murder.  Hip-pockets should be abolished wherever there are courts of law and civilized men and women.  But what was the Emperor after?  Withdrawing his hand just as I overtook him, the mystery was revealed—­it grasped a thick Bologna sausage, which he began to eat with unroyal relish.  It gave me a shock, but he was not the first royal personage who has exhibited low tastes and carnal hankerings.

He was seldom made sport of or treated rudely.  I saw him on one occasion when a couple of passing hoodlums jeered at him.  He turned and gave them a look so full of mingled dignity, pain, and surprise, that the low fellows were abashed, and uttering a forced laugh, with averted faces they hurried on.  The presence that can bring shame to a San Francisco hoodlum must indeed be kingly, or in some way impressive.  In that genus the beastliness and devilishness of American city-life reach their lowest denomination when the brutality of the savage and the lowest forms of civilized vice are combined, human nature touches bottom.